Friday, October 29, 2010

I've been obsessed with felting/fulling old woolen things and remaking them into other things (hats, mittens, blankets, stuffed toys) for a long, long time now (13 years?). But these days, both felting old wool and reconstructing clothing are all the rage--to see what I mean, just go and Google "reconstructed sweater" or "refashioned sweater," or for some real fun, go browse the archives at Wardrobe Refashion.

The sweater above and others I've made over the last year have been particularly inspired by this etsy seller and this one here--though I'm considerably lazier about my construction than they are. Katwise and Movie Boy Productions? That's some high sweater reconstruction art right there.

Still, my sweater is super warm and cozy, and I can't get the idea of spiced pumpkin out of my head when I look at it. It's like all the fall color I could ever need, in one sweater.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

On the left, we have the jug from which the apple cider came. It was full to the brim when I started my journey to reduce it to apple cider syrup. On the right, the finished "syrup." It went a little longer than it should have.

Sharp-eyed observers will note that the jar on the right is upside down. It's been that way for a good 24 hours now--I just wanted to see if the substance inside would move. The answer is...no. Not at all. It has not budged.

Now, in my defense, this stuff actually tastes pretty good (like spiced apple caramel or taffy). If you can scrape it out of the jar. I suppose I could set it in a pan of hot water to melt it a little, and then reconstitute it a bit by adding water or apple juice to it.

But that sounds like so much work. I think I'd rather ship it to Lis's brother and sister-in-law in Schenectady, so it can live at the back of their fridge and commune with the apple spackle Lis made while she was there. You don't think they'd mind, do you?

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

In my mom's group (which includes a few good stay-at-home dads, too), we have a tradition. If someone has a new baby, I organize a dinner brigade for them. Two weeks of dinner-on-the-doorstep, every other night. Awesome idea, right? Super fun for all, no? Except when the (half-assed, remember?) organizer forgets to show up with a meal on her night! Last night, my poor friends with their toddler and brand new infant went hungry on my account. What to do, what to do? Obviously, Thai delivery tonight... xox

Friday, October 22, 2010

I like people. Really. I like them very much. I accept that some people love god, for example, and since I love the god in people, I can jive with that. Go, religion! Get down with your bad sect. What I am having trouble accepting is the lack of importance placed on food in America. Why, to be specific, are there people in this wealthy, suburban culture with college educations, happy homes, and beautiful children, who still eat plasticked food from VoldeMart and McDrone-ald's?

My kid just started preschool in what most people confidently refer to as a "hippie town." We live in Davis, California, the heart of the garden of frickin' organic Eden. And what do I see the littles eating for communal snack? Goldfish. Graham Crackers. Block orange cheese from Target. All provided by parents. I've been bracing myself against the wind and the storm, but man, I am pissed. Yes, everyone is busy and has a dying family member and a break-neck job. Yes, most people have 17 children and just lost their job. But seriously, would it kill them to bring vegetables? To choose life? In this town, all you have to do is take a quarter mile walk outside your door to find overflowing fig trees. It's pomegranate season. There are still Asian pears to be found. Good, actual, real food is available for free in this town, and still the preschoolers get cardboard. One of my friends had to put her foot down at her son's cooperative nursery school, because she didn't want him snacking on bagged Ore-ida french fries every Monday. "But the kids really look forward to Monday fries," the director whined. The kids are two and three years old. They don't know Monday from Doomsday, and they will live without potatoes and grease before naptime.

Am I crazy? Gaaaaagggghghhhh!!!! (Amy, this is why you are glad you have DOGS.)

I am not going to take this lying down. So far, my reaction has been relatively private. I've defensively signed up to bring cupcakes to the Halloween party... but I'm not always the first person to the sign-up sheet. Who knows what Costco-concoction the other parents are going to bring, and how will my pumpkin and cream-cheese mini cuppies compete with neon-green frosting?

The best I could come up with was a book about Curious George going to the hospital. Now, I'm not an enormous fan of Curious George or the weird Man with the Yellow Hat, but it has to be said that George is a nice enough little monkey. So we read the book, which was all about George's ill-advised eating of a puzzle piece, necessitating surgery and a hospital stay. It's a gentle little story about children in the hospital, and it's populated with lovely warm nurses and doctors, and plenty of other children to hang with. Plus bowls of ice-cream to eat.

At one point, Penn and I realized that while two or three of the children in one of the illustrations were given actual character names, five others were not. I asked Penn what he thought the unnamed children should be called. He was a little quiet and noncommittal at first, but he rose to the occasion and pointed at the first little girl.

"That's P.S." he announced.

"Okay," I responded, just kind of rolling with it. "What do you think this other little girl's name is? You know, she has red hair--who do you know who has red hair?" And he named one of his (several!) little red-haired friends, whom I shall here refer to as...oh, Talya. (Why not?) We agreed that the little girl in the picture could be called Talya.

"Okay, so that's P.S., and that's Talya, and who's this boy?"

"Koo." said Penn.

"Okay, and how about this boy?"

"That's Talya-Boy."

"Um, okay, so we have: P.S., Talya, Koo, and Talya-Boy? Hey, what about this other boy over here on the bed?"

Last night, as I was finally getting around to cleaning the kitchen after far too long, I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR. Terry Gross was interviewing an actor named Jason Schwartzman, whom I don't know at all, although he's apparently been around for a while, and is currently starring in a show on...HBO? Maybe? About a writer turned private investigator.

Anyway, Jason Schwartzman seemed like a totally lovely guy, with really interesting things to say, but the thing that really got me was a story he told about writing the theme song for the...let's just call it the HBO show for the sake of convenience, okay? (Okay, I got over being lazy and went and looked it up--it's called Bored to Death.) Schwartzman's a musician as well as an actor, and he was asked to submit a song for consideration as the theme for the show. And he introduced this story with a good deal of embarrassment, confessing that he kind of hated telling it because it would "expose [him] as a sort of low-key liar."

And the story was that during the time he was supposed to be writing the song, he was finishing the filming of a movie, and he was so busy that he just wasn't writing the song at all. And every week, the folks at the show would e-mail him and ask how the song was coming, and every week, he would tell them it was really coming along, and he'd make up some detail of it to sort of prove he'd been working on it--the walking bass line, for instance, or some other element. And at the end of the movie, he knew he had to get the damn song written already, so--in order to make good on his promises--he went back through all the e-mails he'd written, and collected all the elements he'd made up to appease the show's producers. And then he wrote the song based on those elements. In ten minutes.

Ten minutes. Now, he can say he was "lying" about his progress on that song, and sure, he sort of was. But it seems to me this story also illustrates something mysterious and amazing about the creative process, about what our minds are doing when we think we're just procrastinating/not getting anything done.

Creative people seem to have a more-complicated-than-average relationship with procrastination and productivity, and it's hard to know sometimes if we're really wasting time, or if there's some sort of slow cooker thing going on at the back of our brains. Personally, I pretty much always leap to accusing myself of wasting time. But the truth is, if I jump into a project too fast, just because I need to prove to myself that I'm not wasting time, the results are often disastrous. And let's just say that disastrous results are not the most effective way to get yourself all fired up about the next creative project.

I've been going to acupuncture regularly for the last several years for some chronic health issues, and one of the results I've noticed is that I'm getting better at being able to tell when what I'm feeling is due to my energy being stuck, and when it's due to my energy being deficient. I'm still not 100 percent accurate--it's not so easy to tell the difference a lot of the time. But there are subtle clues, and I'm learning to read them, and that's useful, because if I know how my energy is unbalanced, there are things I can do to help re-balance it.

It seems to me that creative energy is probably the same--sometimes I just need to get moving on something to get myself unstuck, and other times, I really need to cut myself some slack and go relax, or stare at other people's art or writing, or go on a fun field trip or something to refuel. But--how to learn to tell the difference between stuck and deficient creative energy? I guess, for one thing, it's easy enough to sit down at my work table or try to write for awhile, to see whether I start to move into the productive space, or whether I start to feel anxious and antsy and miserable. The trick then, is to cut myself some slack when it's the latter--and, of course, to stop pushing myself before things go entirely pear shaped. (How much easier would my life be if I finally, once and for all, fully integrated the idea that the trick is usually to cut myself some slack? So much easier.)It takes faith in the creative process to understand the slow cooker thing and how it works (and, let me be very clear--I don't always have it). It takes faith to keep from beating up on yourself for "procrastinating" because sometimes, the beating up on yourself is the thing that gets your creative energy all stuck in the first place. In other words, accusing yourself of procrastination might be just the mean-spirited thing that will prevent you from being the kind of super-productive artist who can compose a TV theme song on your brain's back burner while you're doing some other fabulous thing across the kitchen.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

"I don't like monkeys," Penn says. "OK," I say. We are in bed, and he has woken up sad from a dream in which he didn't get to stay very long at His Beloved Preschool. "They get angry," he concludes. "Come here, KooKuh. You want me to cuddle you?" There follows some fussiness about how exactly KooKuh would like to be cuddled. With my arm creating a rainbow above his body, apparently. Not super comfortable at 2:30 in the morning.

No monkeys for Penn. This came up a couple weeks back, and the breaking news immediately made the rounds on Facebook. "Tomorrow, when the sun comes up, I hope that there is a farm with no monkeys outside," quoth Penn, and suddenly my boss was inquiring after his mental health.

He is entitled to be wary of monkeys. We all have our faves and naves. I like lemurs, for example; not so much, chimps. I'm not exactly a fan of the zoo or the circus, as a general whole, but perhaps that is because I abhor clowns. I thought that was pretty much a universal truth, but not so. Witness this gift to Penn from a well-meaning admirer:

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Washed my car this morning. Call it an annual ritual. I wouldn't have, but there was this oily film from the last rain. Disturbing on many levels. One of the pleasures of renting a home with a garden hose is I can "wash" the car without leaving the carport. I used BioKleen's dishwashing liquid, which is grey-water safe. And oh, how the off-pouring water was grey.

Waiting now for a much-anticipated call from Charlotte. After that, my pre-work tasks are a) put every single article of clothing awayandb) write 10 Halloween cards. (ha)

xoxI don't have the drugs to sort it out... - The National, "Afraid of Everyone"

Thursday, October 14, 2010

My friend Cassie is gorgeous, with thick blond hair and the confident gait of a pole dancer. She was modeling a pair of pants the other day, and the subject skittered from torso length (hers long, mine short) to height (hers towering, mine diminutive). "I'm five-eleven," she said, and... suddenly I was transported back to high school. Five-eleven. I caught my breath. This is a story about a guy.

I asked Cassie if she had any old flames. You know, unrequited loves she thought about from time to time, whose memory brought back an arresting pang of loss. "Not really," she said. "I did pretty well." I guess that shouldn't be surprising, given the way she wears those pants. But--really? Not even a speck of unconsumated infatuation? Incredible. I can't imagine my life without unrequited love. Which, now that I've said it, seems a little weird. I've certainly enjoyed more than my share of reciprocation. But I kind of like that I loved and lost. I'm grateful for the fierce crushes that never came to any good. Though ancient history, they still shape my life and fuel my work. I'm not sure longing has made me a better person, but desire is certainly a great motivator. It's why I'm typing right now.

I had a couple "someones," when I was younger. Their names have too much power to type in a blog. I am stopped in my tracks every time I remember them, and I never know what will bring it on: a certain smell, a slant of afternoon sunshine, five feet eleven inches.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

The pair on the right is for Lovely Girl Toddler (different from Lovely Boy Toddler who lives here at this blog), and the pair on the left is for Lovely School-Age Girl Child--both children of close friends. Lovely School-Age Girl Child has been hankering for some boots. Last year, I made her this refashioned sweater dress...

...which means I've been hankering for boots for her as well. I'm pretty excited they come with flowers on them, and I'm pretty sure she'll approve.

The other pair is for Lovely Girl Toddler, who, conveniently, has something of a Thing for Shoes. Sadly, they won't fit her yet, but on the bright side, they're too big, and she's growing right into them by the hour. I made her a dress last year as well, and the pictures of it are just as lousy as the pictures of the sweater dress above:

Now that I've thought about it, I'm kind of flipping out at the idea of her wearing that little sundress with these boots. To give you a sense of the ridiculously adorable size of these things, here's one of them on my hand:

They need a good cleaning/polishing, but they're pretty much my ideal boots. Which is to say that if they were anywhere near my own size, Lovely Girl Toddler and I would have to duke it out for them.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

So a while back, I edited this cookbook for the Davis Food Co-op, where both Lis and I worship work in various capacities. We did a leetle print run at Lulu.com, and the thing took forever to sell out, and I don't think anyone at the store is in a big ol' hurry to reorder more books. (Though I still really quite like the cookbook! As do all my mother's friends. So, you know, it must be good.)

Then, just now, I happened to Google myself to figure out something unrelated, and this here Amazon link came up. I mean, who knew Lulu books automatically wound up on Amazon? (Though...maybe they don't? Maybe our former marketing director had something to do with this?)

The best part is: My book is currently ranked the 6,528,445th best selling book on Amazon. You have to admit, that's not bad for a girl who didn't even know she had an Amazon sales ranking. (And the half-assedness just keeps on keeping on.)

I am a half-assed gardener, among everything else. Yesterday, I put "plant winter crops" on a to-do list, and tried not to laugh. (My real goals for this pre-rainy season are to uproot the tomato plants and fold away the hammock.) Today, I yanked several otherwise-beautiful bushy things with irritating fuzzy burrs that live in the midst of a not-so-strawberry patch in our front yard. Why the not-so-strawberries? I don't know. These wood strawberries look the part, but taste like the absence of taste. The previous tenants preferred ground cover to food, perhaps. Anyway, I uprooted the flowering-bush-burrs, and also managed to sprinkle some scarlet flax seeds on a patch of... let's call it earth. This was long, long overdue. So overdue, it nearly never happened. The wind, oddly, has been a call to action for me. The past couple of days have been blustery, hot and fierce. Tornado-y. A tree fell on a car in the Coop parking lot yesterday afternoon, and by the look of it, today is all about one-upmanship. My response to the apocalyptic weather has been to bustle around in a flurry of putter. Tidy this, scrap that. Fashion lists, skip steps. I've been doing dishes, uploading photos, and procrastinating with greater zeal than usual.

I've had this bouquet of scarlet flax flowers since May. My friend Airy cut them from her garden for a wedding I helped decorate, and when I ooed and awed my thanks, she said to keep them, let them dry, then crush the remaining pods and sprinkle the debris wherever I want flowers. They're essentially weeds, she intimated, and thrive by being ignored. My favorite kind of plant, I thought. I've been putting this off, but something about the heinous wind today struck me. Why bother giving the flax even a fighting chance? If the seeds are so resilient, why not toss them into the gale-force wind and see what they're made of? That, and it occurred to me and I had five minutes to just do it, or risk staring at that dried bouquet for years.

I am so proud of myself for this knee-jerk bit of gardening. And what is a blog, if not an enumeration of proud moments? Half-Assed Mama is no more than a list of achievements, really. How Amy And I Still Manage To Impress Ourselves. In spite of... everything. Last week, I so half-assed some apple butter, it came out like fruit leather. Gummy snacks, actually. The chunks would have made excellent rubber balls, if only I'd thought to shape the sauce, before over-baking the life out of it. I left the inedible apple-spackle in a glass jar in my brother's refrigerator; I fully expect to find it, still there, on my next visit to Schenectady. Oh, when I think of the gorgeous Cortlands that went into making that stuff... The size of a baby's head. The peels were so long. At the time, I congratulated myself for not making some sort of garland--"Kill the dream, Lis, kill the dream" sang Amy's voice in my mind--but now I wish I had something to show for Operation Apple Putty. I do have a photo of the scrapped apple peels. My nephew Simon is in the background, assessing the situation.

So my brother Art, the reason for my visit to New York, is a ridiculous over-achiever with two boys and a baby. He is one of my dearest friends, but, man. His idle speed is my race pace. He managed to concoct three delicious dinners while we were there: pasta with gorgonzola cream sauce, homemade pizza with ham and veggies, and maple-breaded salmon, whatthef^%k. Plus separate kid-meals (which I applaud but don't approve). Three full meals at home, with green veggies each night, is a caliber I can barely manage with my one child and part-time job. Art is on it. Last week, he was also somehow able to rake and mow his gigantic yard, while working full time and manifesting an additional nephew for me. An achievement I maybe should attribute to my sister-in-law... but hey. I didn't know our brother Erik had a fourth baby due (yep, another over-achiever) in a matter of days, until I heard it from Art. Erik lives in Bronnoysund, Norway, which is remote to say the least, and so far away from any metropolitan area that his partner, Elisabeth, had to be air-lifted (a term I love, by the way, for conjuring an image of an elephant or a whale, hoisted by helicopter) to a hospital. The Cesaerian would have happened a few planned days later, had she not gone into labor. Which makes her an over-achiever, too! So. The happy phone calls from various grandparents came while we were in Schenectady, announcing Ingvald, at nearly 10 pounds. A fair bit smaller than his predecessor, Konrad, who was 12 and a half at the time of his (vaginal) birth. OverAchievers 'R Us.

It was a great visit, even if I did feel like I was on mute the whole time. I'd wanted to hit a few Halloweeny notes... pumpkin bread, spooky cookies, jack-o-lanterns, spiced apple something. I managed all but the pumpkin bread, but it was still like I was standing, um, still.

Everything pales in comparison to Art and Jess, who "manage" their three (3) boys, two (2) professional careers and approximately one hundred kick ass neighbors in their kick ass suburban neighborhood of, wait for it, Niskayuna*-- and all before 9:30pm, which is the time every night that they have dessert by themselves, because their school-agers have turned their lights off and their baby sleeps 11 to 12 hours a night. It was humbling, though completely lovely, to bask in their glow and enjoy a mildly rainy New York autumn-ber while Penn lost his mind over his cousin's Lego collection.

I do have a tendency to expect too much of myself. ("Ya think?" Amy would say.) While I didn't make it to Dunkin Donuts for a seasonally-appropriate donut and a bag of my co-blogger's beloved coffee beans, I did check out a Thursday morning farmer's market in downtown Schenectady, and an independent bookstore that charmed Penn with its childrens' nook and tiny chairs. ("Forklifts, Mommy!"). We got to talk to a city worker down a man-hole, and marveled at the hundreds of backhoes and asphalt spreaders scattered around the Stockade. Schenectady is one of those perfectly broody, Nor'eastern American cities that sparkle when you visit them in the fall. Blue-collared and cool, with rain-bright foliage and sunsets that leave the city on fire.

Monday, October 11, 2010

This incredibly mellow looking dog is currently a wreck from the sound of the wind. The wind here is intense in October, and sometimes also in April, as if it's sweeping out the season that was to make room for a new one.

Doggles (Lis's nickname!) isn't normally this anxious about wind, though she does go out of her mind at the sound of, say, a smoke detector with a bad battery--that sound pretty much makes her try to climb inside Brian or me, which, as you can imagine, is less than conducive to getting things done.

This morning, as Doggles and I were discussing why she was such a nervous little dog, I asked her whether she'd been busy with the espresso machine before Brian and I got up. She denied everything.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

A few weeks ago, on my husband’s birthday, Lis asked Lovely Toddler whether he wanted to do something fun for Brian for his birthday.

“Yeah!” responded Lovely Toddler, “Maybe, get him a digger.”

“Okay.” said Lis. And then she asked where they might begin to look for a digger.

“I think…” Lovely Toddler thought about it. “We could go to a yard sale for a digger present.”

Lovely Toddler has clearly internalized both our particular community’s commitment to the reduce, reuse, recycle ethic, and also that old chestnut about giving people presents that you would want to receive. (Lis tells us that a clarifying discussion ensued about how yard sales are generally not held on Tuesdays, and a thrift shop might be a better bet.)

And then, this past weekend, Brian and I were at a yard sale, and look what turned up:

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But please be pleasant. We reserve the right to delete unpleasant or mean notes. We're doing this for our health, after all. (We also don't promise we'll check this e-mail obsessively or anything. We have enough obsessive behaviors around here. So please be patient waiting for a reply.)halfassedmama@gmail.com

6.2.13 "Can I put on this hat again? Then come outside and get cake?" Sure. "But first: I've gotta get out of control."

5.28.13 "I'm going to float out in space and EAT the WORLD!" And what do you suppose the world is going to taste like? "A peanut."

5.28.13 "You know what makes a skeleton even more freaky? A beard and long hair. Or a mustache."

5.6.13 (impromptu song) "We go to the rockin-rockin ri-ver. And we get a cup of lime-ade. And then the kids set the hammock in the sea. And we rock-n-rock-n-rock-n... We go to the rockin-rockin ri-ver!"

5.5.13 (chant, accompanied by a rhythmic back-massage for his mama) "Horse-radish, horse-radish! Horse-radish has a ponytail. Horse-radish has only one earring. Horse-radish has a cup of milk on the table. Horse-radish! Horse-radish! Horse-radish! (endless)

3.16.13 (pulling a dripping Peep out of his hot chocolate) "Are there more of these dumplings?"

3.15.13 "I like turkey vultures. They are awesome."

3.14.13 "Mom. I'm allergic to car light."

3.7.13 "I have three questions. When can we have a baby? Can we plan to go to Dillon Beach? And... We're running out of toilet paper."

2.17.13 "What was the name of the first person? You told me once... I think it was Michael Jackson. What movies has Michael Jackson been in?"

2.11.13 "No one can live on Pluto. Well, Santa can. And Mrs. Claus."

1.29.13 "Here's a shoe! Here's a carrot! People!!!" Penn. You can't feed the Goat Ghost people. "We're cleaning up! And then we're going to play a game with the goat ghost. Goat ghost is fast." (Goat Ghost is Daddy.)

1.13.13 "Mommy, can you make this sound like a rockstar's guitar?"

1.10.13 "I'm going to be awarding you something! Because you're sick. It might be a small basket of kumquats, or... love... or a kiss... or snuggles."

1.7.13 Are you a sleepyhead today? "No. I'm just keeping Daddy company. 'Cuz he's by himself in here."

12.26.12 "Ho, ho, the baby toe, hung where you can not see. Somebody doesn't wait for you, is there one for me..."

12.26.12 "No, we can't put it on the wall. If it fall at deep angle-age, it will break."

12.25.12 What do we do, for work? "You do food, coop-er-a-tive-ly... and Daddy studies."

12.19.12 Know what that is? "Small pox?"

12.8.12 "I just said a bad word." (beat) "Sorry, Santa."

12.4.12 "No apples." Can I use persimmons instead? "No fruit in soup."

12.3.12 "My owie was bleeding a little outside. We wrapped it in wet grass." Who did that? "Ruby. She said she was a doctor. I loved it."

11.20.12 While playing scattergories, "I hope I roll a P so I can put something inappropriate."

11.15.12 "I love you til the numbers run out."

10.7.12 (Watch out for the hot grill!) "I know! Mommy! Sparks flew out, but I survived!"

10.6.12 "When I grow up, I want to build the fastest car. Then I'm going to leave that job and be a scientist."

5.13.12 "This is going to be good heaven." (upon nestling down on the couch with me, to cuddle and drink milk. Happy half-assed mother's day!)

5.7.12 (His pants are on backward; I motion for him take them off.) "You don't have to do that! You can just spin them around!" No you can't, you've got legs. "Oh yeah. Legs."

5.4.12 Overheard: (an explanation from my husband to Penn.) "Alright, yes. There probably is a way we can make a book that lives in the toilet for a while."

5.2.12 "I think Tatum and me are going to live in the same house. When we grow up. It'll have a basement, and an upstairs, and a garage next to the bottom. And an attic, so we can play in it." [All said with maximum delight.]

4.23.12 "Mommy, can I get a little darker skin on me? From outside?"

4.21.12 "Who is the New Yorker? Is the New Yorker a vampire?"

4.18.12 Yesterday, Penn was taking sign-ups for Dragon Lessons. I know this because his friend Tatum is an excellent reporter. What do Dragon Lessons entail? Tatum doesn't know, but she signed up anyway.

4.10.12 Maybe we should clean up a little tomorrow. "Yeah, let's clean up for the thunderstorm. And eat good food. And not touch metal."

4.8.12 (Easter Sunday) "I accidentally ate some more candy. But don't worry, I didn't get diabetes."

4.5.12 (We are discussing how Penn might behave as a big brother.) Remember how Luke feels about Leia? "And how Luke feels about Lando?"

4.2.12 Troy says no. Penn says "Why don't you consider it?"

3.20.12 "Sauerkraut yum!!!!"

3.14.12 Troy mentions his crutches. "Those are called pogo sticks."

3.13.12 "Dad, did you break your leg?" No, just a bone in my foot. This is a splint. "Do you have a fake leg?"

3.5.12 "I love you way too much." (Usually he wakes up with an I-love-you-Mommy, and he frequently says I-love-you-too-much. Why this morning was different, I'll never know.)

12.26.12 "No, we can't put it on the wall. If it fall at deep angle-age, it will break."

12.25.12 What do we do, for work? "You do food, coop-er-a-tive-ly... and Daddy studies."

ToddlerBlog

3.4.12 "Can it be hot and cold?" You mean warm. "No. I want it to be snug. Like a bed." (The bathwater.)

2.29.12 (tshirt wrapped around his neck) "Do I look like Bib Fortuna?"

2.21.12 "You are such a... person who is a toilet."

2.19.12 My husband mutters, picking up objects from the floor: "Sticks. I'm gonna blame that on your genes." Our child fills every pocket with wood chips and stones. Laundry is potpurri. The hoarding is strong within him.

2.18.12 "Eyeball swap!!!! Nevermind. Swap BUTTS."

2.7.12 "Who can be my husband?" Anyone you like, sweetheart. "What if I can't find them?" [Ah. Well.] Then you look for your person, and that person will find you. #thankyou9thcircuitcourtofappeals

2.3.12 Penn. Take a bit of this c̶a̶u̶l̶i̶f̶l̶o̶w̶e̶r̶ tree. Now take a breath while you are eating. What does it taste like? Doesn't it taste like CHEESE? "It tastes like I'm eating a giraffe."

2.3.12 "Double guns actually make you die quicker."

1.31.12 "This will be fancy cool... Toothbutter, you will not come out! ... six pieces of tooth powder... arr, pirates." [post-Star Wars chatter]

1.29.12 "Mom, you're intering me UP!" (silent t)

1.14.12 "Mom, you stink like BUNNIES!"

1.12.12 "Mommy, can we please go to ToiletLand? Noah knows how to get there!" (Troy) Are you sure it's not maybe called ToyLand, or something? "No--TOILETLand!"

12.23.11 "Know what I think we're going to get for Christmas? An UPSTAIRS. Well, not an upstairs, a renovation."

12.21.11 "I can't wait to be a grownup." Why? You don't like being a little kid? "I want everyone to be the same age at the same time and the same size."

12.14.11 (middle of the night) "Mommy. Can I ask you if werewolves are real." Sure honey. They are not real. "Can you blow this dream out of my head?" Sure. *blows on forehead* "In my dream, it was the night before Thanksgiving. There were werewolves coming! And there were these guys, with plenty of eyeballs. One of the werewolves, it tried to bite me. But instead it ate one of the guys with plenty of eyeballs."

12.8.11 (while putting up ornaments of the toy and whimsical variety) What's in that clock, Penn? "Oh, a mouse. But it's sleeping. We should leave it alone."

11.15.11 "How do you make egg nog?" Well, you take eggs, and separate them... "First you take egg." Uh-huh. Then you take-- "Then you take nog!" [Sadly, the recipe ended there, as parents died of laughter.]

11.11.11 "Dad. Would C3P0 get mad if you called him 'C Pee-Pee 0'?"

11.9.11 "Dad, are you up for a baby?" [no was the long and short of it.]

11.2.11 "I had a dream I was a leaf-blower, walking by itself. And blowing leaves! And I had an ear mask. I imagined it."

10.13.11 Whilst playing lego in the other room: "Aw, SHITE."

10.8.11 "Diaper. DIAPER! Diaper. I want a diaper." You want to wear a diaper? "Yes. I love diapers." When was the last time you wore a diaper? When you were three? (Pause.) "Beware. BeWARE of yourself!!!"

10.3.11 Looking at a picture of Ronald Regan and a golden retriever. "Did that dog get a sleep shot?"

9.25.11 [Hits my tummy.] "I like your tummy."

9.13.11 "Dad, can you and Mom make another baby?" Dad: I'll think about it. "But do you still have baby seeds?" Dad: [stifles laugh] Yes. Me: We're talking about it. "But... you're not talking about it. I don't hear baby language!"

9.2.11 "Star Trooper and Darth Vader are camping, and they have to shoot a bear."

8.26.11 "There were midwives helping me come out?" Yup, four years ago today. "What were their names?" One was Jennifer, and another was... hm. "Totoro?"

8.15.11 "I had a dream last night where Tatum made a yodel and light bulbs came out."

7.28.11 "Sometimes, poops take a long time. That's because they're getting dressed."

7.27.11 "Today, we learned about sea turtles. They're actually called fire turtles. They have a bucket in their chests that they can fill up with water and put out fires. They are fire turtles. Don't tell anyone."

7.26.11 "Mommy, where are my seeds?" .... "How do they come out?" .... "Why?" .... "Does it hurt?" ... "Do they make vegetables?" ... "How do they get in the uterus?"

7.24.11 "Mom, I wish we would have that so small kitten."

7.23.11 After babysitting, MD reported the following: Cracks in the road are caused by volcanoes. Captain Penn once stood in a volcano, but he was wearing his safety clothes - from Target.

7.12.11 "So, Mom. If you want a vagina or new knees, you go to the doctor, and they cut your knee off and glue on a new one. I'm serious, Mom."

7.8.11 "When I'm a big guy, I want you to hold me. I want you to hold me forever."

7.1.11 "I steal things! Because I am a serious animal."

6.15.11 "I painted inside my eyes." "Not quite yet-- I want to dry these shells in the lovely air." "Oh, Mom! Look--I found something lovely!" (holds up a clump of mud with a mussel inside a half-clam.)

6.14.11 Yes, Penn? What did you want to say? "I lost it in my head."

6.13.11 "Whoa! That's hogantic!"

6.11.11 "We don't even want jelly babies right now. Right? We don't even want them. Right now. I don't even want jelly babies right now."

6.4.11 "Before Mommy dies, let's get a new baby. From Daddy's belly."

5.28.11 "I ate all of you. Only left is little bones."

5.24.11 "If there were a giant monster inside, and he needed an orange cape, then I think it might be Batman. And he'll knock on the door, and if we don't answer, he'll think we're doing something private."

5.14.11 "I wanna see the purple-ution." [Multi-purpose solution.]

5.14.11 "That's Seattle. Mom, did you know there is a restaurant up there? Poker. Space Poker." [Space needle.]

2.10.11 "I wish we had a lot of bathrooms. And a fire pole. I wish we lived in a fire station. Oh. This *is* a fire station."

1.28.11 **introducting guest-blogger, Miss N (3 yrs)** "Once upon a time there was a spiderman and her name was Sonya. She shot fire out! She met with a robot and they were furious. Then tinkerbell came and saved the robot. Then sleeping beauty came and told them she loved them. Then snow white came and saved spiderman. Then cinderella came and I don't know what she did. The end."

1.23.11 Penn wants donuts, which I've never made. "Oh, I know how to make them. Butter. And brown sugar. And... flour. And... you have to play with the dough."

1.17.11 "I'm not feeling very good, but I can still drink milk. I'm going to be alive for the rest of the day."

1.15.11 "I think I would like a baby, and a sister." And how are you going to get a baby and a sister? "You're going to make them!" Pause. "But how does the cord get in there?"

1.10.11 Home from preschool, Penn spies a coloring sheet I set out for him. "Daddy, Santa came!"

1.5.11 Penn has a friend who has a pterodactyl. Sometimes, this pterodactyl gets sad. And meows.

12.24 After dessert, Penn is given three pieces of candy (which he must wait to eat): "I think this is cranberry" [it's a lozenge], "this is brownie" [it's a tootsie roll], "and this one is... soft cream." [It's a hershey's kiss.]

12.16.10 "There is a snowman, and where his sticks used to be, some new arms come out, and they are robot arms! [makes robot arm gestures] And then a camera comes out of his eyes... and numbers!"

12.1.10 "Do you know what is Columbus? Columbus is a city where you visit your Grandma. And Denis. And you go up, up, up... and you look down, and there are toys."

11.18.10 "Let's hide!" (hiding under blankets) "Mommy. Don't be sad of the dark. It's only dark from space."

11.15.10 "But I want to have a baby in my belly." Well, only people born with uteruses can make babies in their bellies. "I want a vagina." Well, you can have a vagina when you're an adult, if you like. (Additional conversation about surgeries and the costs of getting a vagina.) "I want to have surgery so I can have a vagina."

11.13.10 "I went to the duck store. There was a monster, and he tried to kill me. But... he put lettuce on me! Then turned me into a butterfly."